Gartner buys AMR

01Dec09

In breaking news today, Gartner has bought AMR Research for $64 million in cash. In total this acquisition brings Gartner an extra 40 analysts and 45 sales people.

What this means – our view…

This is a very smart move by Gartner and continues their approach to acquire firms and therefore individuals who have rich industry experience. What’s more this also enables Gartner to enrich their vertical portfolio which in recent years has fallen in lieu of their horizontal expertise.

Perhaps most significantly though they have purchased the key thought leadership in the supply chain (such as Nigel Montgomery). This is intrinsically linked to IT and therefore a natural complement to analyst advisory services.

Perhaps the other less obvious reason for this acquisition is the subsequent hiring of a very experienced sales force who will no doubt help Gartner sell its richer portfolio.

Looking at previous mergers (such as Meta), we can expect some natural churn but overall I think this is good for Gartner.

But is it good for AMR and their client base?

At first glance you would say ‘yes’. Previous AMR clients will now have access to Gartner’s rich resources as well as their analysts giving a far broader and richer experience – I expect that with time this will come at an extra cost but we will have to wait and see.

For the other industry players, it is a clear sign that they will have to up their game once again.

If you’re interesting in reading more on this, it’s worth checking out the IIAR blog post on the acquisition. There’s some interesting and valuable insights there.

My first thoughts are: who’s next? and that now those agressive AMR salespeople will prevent us from briefing Gartner analysts unless we are members…I have had some bad experience with AMR with some of my AR clients who had legitimate reasons to brief their analysts: yet we were stopped at the door by the salespeople. I hope Gartner can train AMR salespeople about their policy of objectivity and that every vendor should have a chance to tell their story providing they have a good one and are talking to the relevant analyst.